The Beginning

Around Valentine’s Day, Avi posted this meme on his blog. I thought it was a fun one, and timely, so I bookmarked it and filed it off in the “remember for later” pile.

I think it is most appropriate for the re-dedication of this blog to fatherhood, specifically, my fatherhood. I still get a little clinchy when I use that level of directness. So… without further adieu… the Beginning.

Where/how did you meet?
Mrs. eSquared and I met when we both worked at a hotel in Bothell. We became fast friends, and stayed so for eighteen months. Then, I just knew… knew I wanted more; knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

How long have you known each other?
We met in April of 1992. Fifteen years… wow.

How long after you met did you start dating?
Like I mentioned above, we were friends about a year and a half.

How long did you date before you were engaged?
Again, about fourteen months, give or take.

How long was your engagement?
I surprised her on Memorial Day, in Richards Park in Eugene Oregon. We were married in December. So we were engaged for seven months.

How long have you been married?
As of last December, we’ve been married eleven years.

What is your anniversary?
December 16th 1995

How many people came to your wedding reception?
Around 150, I think. It’s still a blur. Even now, eleven years later, we meet people (I think for the first time) and Mrs. E2 says “No… they were at our wedding… they gave us the (whatever).”

What kind of cake did you serve?
The cake… our one glitch. A long story, but we had an old family friend make it… supposedly a master pastry chef, from Austria or something like that. To be delicate, it sucked top to bottom, raspberry filling to marzipan icing. Sucked.

Where was your wedding?
We were married in the Chapel on the Northwest College (now Northwest University).

What did you serve for your meal?
We had an early afternoon wedding… we served salads and sandwich platters. Neither of which we had time to eat. We went through Taco Bell on our way to the Bed and Breakfast.

How many people were there in your bridal party?
Three-a-piece

Are you still friends with them all?
Yup. Though some are in different states, and we don’t talk that much.

Did you or your spouse cry during the ceremony?
Yes, both of us.

Most special moment of your wedding day?
The whole day was the best of my life (so far). If I had to pick… it would be seeing how beautiful Mrs. eSquared was and looking into her eyes.

Any funny moments?
Yeah… when we were holding hands at the alter, I was holding hers ridiculously high… chest high. I don’t know why.

Any big disasters?
Other than the cake…. None.

Where did you go on your honeymoon?
Cabo san Lucas

How long were you gone?
6 days

If you were to do your wedding over, what would you change?
The cake.

What side of the bed do you sleep on?
Generally… I sleep on the right. But recently, with the pregnancy, we trade occasionally.

What size is your bed?
Queen

Greatest strength as a couple?
Humor and communication…

Greatest challenge as a couple?
Communication.

What is your song?
We don’t really have one. Mrs. eSquared might disagree with me… but I can’t think of one. We have movies.

What did you dance your first dance to?
The Oompa song (danced with Mrs. eSquared’s second grade class. It was a hoot.

What kind of flowers did you have at your wedding?
One of my fondest memories about our wedding. My favorite flower has always been the stargazer lily. Because it’s my favorite, Mrs. eSquared chose it as the focus of our wedding flora.

Are your wedding bands engraved? What do they say?
My ring is engraved with the ever-romantic: 14K FG

My beautiful wife

The Same ol Stuff

It's Thanksgiving week... again!

This is the time of year that I always can’t believe is here. I never catch myself saying, "WOW! Groundhog Day again!" Even birthdays don’t seem to phase me. This concept was beyond me as a kid. Why would someone not care about their birthday? People give you stuff... I get anything I want for dinner (which was usually macaroni & cheese) and all the sugar a hyper kid can eat, or the parents can tolerate.
Only the holidays freak me out. Then I write the wrong date on everything for three months… and I’m good. Until another Halloween.

Commercialism: Macaroni and Cheese or Macaroni & Cheese.

Mrs. E2 and I are packing the cat in the car and heading south for the weekend for some time with the Fam. Wylie is generally good with the trip… he gets good drugs. In ways, I envy him.

Here’s a question for you. Take a moment and post an answer, one word will do.
If you could be an artist of some sort, (writer, musician, painter, etc.) and you knew you would be successful (whatever that means to you) what type of artist would you be?

Extra credit question: What would that scenario look like?

I’ll post my answer tomorrow, or the next day.

Almost 100 Things about Me

1. I graduated from Lake Washington High School in 1985.
2. I can’t stand mushrooms. Never have liked them.
3. I just don’t understand all the fuss over Star Wars.
4. My skin is ruddy and I tan very easily.
5. When I was young, I cut my bangs when my hair was wet. It was a disaster.
6. Yellow is my favorite color
7. I hate shaving. Shaving sucks. It’s scary, and I wish I didn’t feel the need to do it.
8. I do not suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but I have tendancies.
9. I do suffer (and so do those around me) from a Left Brained Word Fetish.
10. Approval is very important to me.
11. I’ve taken Trombone lessons and voice lessons
12. One of my OCD tendencies is making lists. Sometimes I add things to my lists that I’ve already done just to check them off.
13. I use some shareware without paying for it, and have looked up serial numbers online to gain full access.
14. I attended Boy Scout Camp several consecutive summers when I was young.
15. I am an Eagle Scout.
16. I like sex. Oh yes.
17. I used to bowl in a league.
18. I’ve been to Culinary Arts School, but I hated cooking professionally
19. My first real job was feeding baseballs into pitching machines.
20. Though I’ve never been arrested, I’ve done stuff for which I should have been. I wasn’t planning to run for public office anyway.
21. There are so many things I’d rather do when I have to Shower. Showering is such a waste of time.
22. I hate being hot. I prefer winter to summer.
23. I don’t understand the show Everybody Loves Raymond.
24. When brushing my teeth, I use very hot water. It seems cleaner.
25. I paint my toenails blue, but never my fingernails.
26. I'm always hot, even when other people are cold.
27. I'm not an organized sports fan.
28. I have almost 20k in student loans
29. Some of my friends, especially my friends who don't live close by, don't call or email me as much as I call or email them. I used to resent it. Now I have come to appreciate my role as a nurturer of friendships. I think being an only child makes me place more value on friendships.
30. I once owned a 9mm Taurus handgun. I gave it away after I realized there was nearly nothing worth taking another life over.
31. I have no sense of direction whatsoever. (for irony, see #15)
32. I wish I enjoyed exercise.
33. I like woodsy, herbal, floral, and spicy fragrances more than fruity ones.
34. People say my eyes are my best feature
35. I like reading theory.
36. I'm a huge procrastinator.
37. love to sing
38. When I hear a song I like, I can listen to it over and over without tiring of it. I will usually sing along if no one else is around.
39. When I was a kid, I loved to climb trees, move out to the edge of a branch and let myself fall out of the tree.
40. I would like to write a book someday.
41. I have a tattoo
42. I am an electronics freak.
43. I buy a lot of cheap electronics crap on ebay, I am almost always disappointed. Now all the electronics are sitting in a drawer in my office.
44. I like the smell of gasoline.
45. I didn’t go to Disneyland until I was an adult. It truly is the most magical place on earth.
46. I liked to build a fort out of the couch as a kid
47. Sometimes I still imagine I’m in a spaceship as I try to go to sleep
48. I like to wake up early in the morning.
49. Mom still lives in the same house we moved into when I was 5.
50. I love dramatic, summer thunderstorms. Northwest thunderstorms are anticlimactic, and dull.
51. I don’t like sugar sweetened drinks
52. I was a tenor in my high school choir, but I wanted to be a bass.
53. I’ve sung the tenor solos in the Messiah… I haven’t sung since.
54. I scored 100% on my written test to get my driver's license. I almost failed the driving test. It was parallel parking on a hill that nearly flunked me.
55. Today, I am so good at parallel parking it scares people.
56. Stopping on a steep hill with an automatic transmission freaks me out. Stopping on a steep hill with a manual transmission REALLY freaks me out.
57. I can get along with almost anyone. I’m not sure if almost anyone can get along with me.
58. I leave both the toilet seat and the cover down.
59. My blood type is O positive.
60. I tend to be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none.
61. I lived in Seattle, but I'm not a big fan of seafood.
62. I used to sing in a barber shop quartet. It’s my favorite type of singing.
63. Sometimes I think I can do anything, given proper instructions
64. When someone would ask what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said an animal scientist. I don't think I really knew what I wanted to do, but having an answer kept the adults happy.
65. I've always been able to interact easily with people older than myself.
66. I love talking about relationships and human interaction.
67. Sometimes I can be arrogant.
68. I had a fascination with briefcases, until I finally got one and realized they weren't all that exciting.
69. I prefer the toilet paper to roll off the top
70. I like to make people laugh.
71. Excessive use of punctuation (especially exclamation marks) bugs me.
72. When I'm tasked with something repetitive or monotonous I find the most efficient way to complete it, often testing different strategies to speed up the process. This usually takes longer than just completing the tasks.
73. I had my middle and last names legally changed in 1984
74. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a scientist of some sort. I can’t tolerate the math though.
75. I like math, I’m just not good at it.
76. I don't have a good ear for lyrics
77. I am allergic to chololate. That's my only allergy.
78. The sound of someone brushing their teeth really annoys me.
79. I have many watches, and feel lost if I leave the house without one. Generally, there is a clock within my eyesight.
80. For the longest time I couldn’t understand why anyone would waste their money on a Mac. Now… the next computer I buy will be.
81. I have early onset of middle-aged grumpiness; it’s not difficult to piss me off. Wait… I am middle aged.
82. Fall is my favorite season.
83. My favorite movie is The Legend of 1900.
84. I don’t have a favorite book.
85. I like sharing food with others.
86. It takes me ages to decide what I'm going to eat.
87. I don’t like sushi… it’s the seaweed.
88. I believe in multipolar world. The one where differences are recognized and appreciated.
89. I can be stubborn.
90. And too straight forward.
91. For me relations are fuzzy and multidimensional. That's why it's so interesting to find where the limits of technology-mediated ways to represent them. Or to move those limits.
92. I like flying. I would like to be a pilot.
93. I have a cat. His name is Wylie
94. I have liberal views on most issues.
95. I think "The Simpsons" is one of the best shows ever (particularly the early years).
96. I think corporations have grown too powerful… esp. Microsoft, Time Warner, and Wal-Mart.
97. I love jazz.
98. I’ve never smoked pot or taken any drug not prescribed by a doctor. Sometimes I feel I missed out.

I'm an old, smart, sexy, lucky chicken

Blogging words have eluded me today. While foraging for ideas, I stumbled across some of these silly quizes. Yes, they're meaningless and trite, and absolutely true!

Why not 80%? No, that's not a pic of me.

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I'm not surprised

Your Quirk Factor: 67%

You're so quirky, it's hard for you to tell the difference between quirky and normal. No doubt about it, there's little about you that's "normal" or "average."

How Quirky Are You?

Eighth Grade Math

Well... it took me 24ish years, but I finally passed 8th grade math. See Mr. Higbee... I did it!

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?